Welcome to all for the seventh version of the Gamefront Network Update - News Section the first part of the weekly news post. The news part of the Weekly update includes the latest news that has been posted on the Network Sites over the past week as well as some of the latest news from the Gamefront Main Site. There has been a fair bit of news from both the network sites and the main Gamefront site including new games, interesting stories, cheats, Free DLC and a lot of trailers this week!.

We would love to hear any suggestions that you have; if you see something that you would like to be added to the Weekly Network Update, or you have any suggestions that you think may improve the Network Update then simply drop me an email at Danny[at]filefront[dot]com (please put "Network Update" as the subject though ). If you like the Network Update please feel free write a comment as I would love to hear any critism, or support (constructive though please as this is the only way that I know how good or bad the insider is and it would help me to improve this further).

We’re about 24 hours away from the “early start” of the Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam expansion. I don’t know about you, but I’m stoked for this one. BFBC2 is my favorite shooter of the year, and now there’s an expansion. Win.

In order to get the rest of you as excited as I am, DICE has rolled out the launch trailer for the Vietnam expansion. It features some gameplay footage, lots of explosions, and a few accolades from reviews.

Enjoy it below, or slip over to our file download page to get a copy to keep for yourself.

Nearly everyone I know has been really excited about Bulletstorm since we got a closer look at it at E3 this year. Over the top action, leashing enemies, kicking them, and then finishing them off: who the hell wouldn’t like that?

As if what we already know wasn’t enough to get you interested in Bulletstorm, Epic is upping the ante. Buy yourself a copy of the ‘Epic Edition’ of Bulletstorm, and you’ll also grab early access to the Gears of War 3 beta test.

The Epic Edition will also include 25,000 experience points, visual upgrades for the leash, Peace Maker Carbine, boots and armour.

You may as well get your pre-order in now, because you know you’re getting it. Bulletstorm lands on store shelves on Feb. 22, 2011.

Beside the gorgeous visuals, what sets Crysis apart from other shooters is one piece of equipment: the Nanosuit. Besides granting you super strength, super speed and a ridiculous amount of armor, it can also allow you to go into a stealth mode that basically renders you invisible.

Crytek is giving us a closer look at all the awesomeness contained in the new Nanosuit in Crysis 2 in this new trailer. Check it out below, or head on over and download it.

Imagine if Edgar Wright and Martin Scorcese teamed up to adapt the plot of Super Mario Bros. That’s what these guys calling themselves The Country Club did, and they mangled GTA IV to make that dream a reality. Enjoy the trailer for The Brothers Mario.

It’s hard to decide what the best thing about this video is. The clever repurposing of Mario catch phrases? Yoshi as an Asian car modder? “The Minus World” as a strip club? Actually, I got it, and you will too about 2 minutes in. The theme from Super Mario World will never sit right with you again.

DLC comes in all flavors. Some are map packs, some are new weapons, and some are quite…different. In an effort to release the most unique DLC ever, Microsoft is releasing some brand new Fable 3 DLC today that features dogs.

I haven’t heard a lot of complaints from Fable 3 players that their in-game canine companion isn’t the proper breed, but apparently Lionhead has. In response, they’re bring three new breeds to the game: German Shepherd, Doberman, and Poodle. Wait, did I just say poodle? Yeah, I did.

If your current dog is completely fine with you, here’s little something that you might like: a free Yule Hat. Yes, you too can look like Santa as you oppress the populace of Albion. That should make the kids happy, eh? The DLC is live today, with the dog pack running 240 MS Points, and the Yule Hat coming completely free of charge. Merry Christmas, or something.

Perfect World Entertainment has just unveiled the next video highlighting the Marksman class with Forsaken World’s very own Product Manager, Clifton Chu. You can download this video here or watch it below.

It gets harder and harder every year to define RPG as a specific genre. Almost every major game from Madden to Hello Kitty feature story progression and leveling of character abilities. The challenge is to find titles these days without some role-playing element.

Even titles like Enslaved or 007, which have key protagonists, allow for customization and ability development. Call of Duty and Battlefield open up new weapon loadouts and player levels throughout, Halo:Reach even features RPG-like elements in the multiplayer achievements.

2010 was a good year for the more traditional RPG titles like Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins (DLC mostly), Square’s Final Fantasy XIII and tons of JRPGs. These are the staff picks for the standout titles and a little of our reasons behind our choices.

There are bad games, and then there are the games that turn us into disapproving mothers about to emotionally devastate our children by uttering that powerful word: disappointed. This list is full of those games.

This is it — the year is over and we’re looking back at the absolute greatest video games the industry had to offer us. Some of this you’ve heard before — it will likely surprise no one that Red Dead Redemption is featured prominently on this list. The best games have come up more than once on our other lists, but here you’ll find the games that were the standouts of the year, and the ones we couldn’t stop playing all year.

Activision has released a new trailer for GoldenEye 007. This trailer today for GoldenEye 007 featuring some of the game’s accolades and achievements. You can download this video here or watch it below.

Awkwardness is quite hilarious (as you can see above), and this Team Fortress 2 vid is full of it. It features an awkward guy with a lisp relentlessly trying to get some girl to be his Steam friend and play some Left 4 Dead with him and everybody else trying to get him to leave her alone. Some folks seem to think awkward guy is a troll who has been doing this kind of thing for a while in many a game of TF2, but even if that is the case, this video is still quite amusing just for how uncomfortable he seems to be making everyone.

Last summer, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light dropped on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network, and turned out to be a great top-down dungeon crawling experience, packed with intuitive two-stick combat and a phenomenal cooperative mode.

Six months later, Square Enix has ported Guardian of Light to Apple’s iPhone and iPad, with a crazy degree of faithfulness to the original release. The iOS version is, in fact, almost exactly the same game, and although it has scaled-back graphics and virtual touchscreen controls, it plays just as well as it did on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.

A quick rundown for anyone who missed the review last time around: Lara Croft, you know, the tomb-raider, stars in this installment that’s in many ways a simplified version of her other exploits. It involves an artifact that contains an ancient evil, which evil guys have released, leaving it up to Lara and the titular Guardian of Light to recapture said evil.

Square Enix has released a new video today showing off some of details on the different characters you can hack into and play in Mindjack, including monkeys with machine guns, raging silver back gorillas, mechs, enemy soldier and even civilians with some nice guns! You can download this video from our fast, free download servers.

Unlockables are almost de rigeur these days, with developers exploiting our obsessive-compulsive tendencies to ensure that we’re playing their games for longer amounts of time, while paying greater amounts of attention. Not all unlockables are created equal, however, so below we’ve highlighted some of the best.

Since the beginning of time, gamers have loved violence, and game designers have loved giving it to them. Since the advent of modern hardware and software, that violence has been more realistic than ever, serving up immaculate HD limbs, blood splatters, and giblets flying in every direction. We at GameFront take a certain ghoulish glee in all the carnage, and we’ve put our heads together to bring you the most violent games of 2010.

If you watched the Spike VGAs last weekend (or followed our liveblog), you saw the new trailer for Resistance 3. Now, thanks to the PlayStation Blog, you can see the extended Director’s Cut of that trailer.

It’s got more live-action in it, as well as…hey, you know what? Just watch the thing already.

Age of Conan was one of those MMOs you thought just couldn’t fail. After all, the Conan universe is popular, and it seemed the perfect setting for a fantasy MMORPG. Unfortunately, the game didn’t fare so well upon release. It’s improved since then, and now we’ve got some news that may bring a lot of attention to Funcom’s title.

It seems that Robot Chicken writer Mike Fasalo is producing a web comedy series set in the world of Hyboria, and that it will be created using the characters, locations and engine from Age of Conan. The series will also feature the voices of comedian Harland Williams (Dumb and Dumber, Half Baked) and Dan Milano (Greg the Bunny, Robot Chicken).

Behind the whole thing is Paradox Entertainment, who has a hand in the upcoming Conan the Barbarian feature film that slated to be released in August. No word yet on when these web episodes will be released, as this press release was simply announcing that the series was in production.

So LittleBigPlanet 2, huh. I guess people are pretty excited about that, and the fact that it’s going to include support for Playstation Move. That excitement is part of the reason Media Molecule slapped together Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves, a downloadable cooperative spin-off that showcases how Move and LBP might work together.

Unfortunately, Prehistoric Moves isn’t much more than an underwhelming tech demo that you have to pay to play — unless you’re a member of Playstation Plus, in which case you can impose on a friend to play it with you for free.

That’s an important part of Prehistoric Moves: it’s co-op only. The game will support up to four Dual Shock controllers along with one Move controller, but there’s barely enough to do here for two people, let alone five. You’ll experience everything this download has to offer in under an hour with two decent players — a little more if you’re playing it with a small child or people who don’t like video games. The latter audience seems to be who Prehistoric Moves was designed for, and it is necessarily easy and simplistic.

Every day, we’re drawing closer to the release of Portal 2, and that’s a good thing! In an effort to whet our ravenous appetites for info on the upcoming first-person puzzler, Valve has rolled out a new video that once again highlights the cooperative portion of the game.

This trailer shows off the creation of Atlas and P-body, the Aperture science (droids? Robots? Turrets? Whatever…) that you and your co-op partner will play as. If you wondered where they came from, this should clue you in.

In this Shogun 2 Total War Battle Report The Creative Assemblys Land Battle Programmer Ingimar Gudmunsson and Studio Communications Manager Kieran Brigden grants you a very detailed look at some of the enhancements and new features of Total War: SHOGUN 2. You can download this video here or watch it below.

Atari has released a new trailer for Test Drive Unlimited 2. This trailer will give you insight into the sleek and sophisticated look of the Audi model. You can download this video here or watch it below.

I don’t give a s–t what you think of the Yakuza series. I enjoy them, though, because I like fighting games and I like Japanese randomness when it’s possible to consume it in small doses and I like dicking around in open game worlds. The Yakuza franchise gives us all those things, and so yay Yakuza 4. I actually played it a bit at PAX and really enjoy throwing a cigarette in some guy’s face.

Anyway, despite Ryū ga Gotoku 4: Densetsu o Tsugumono being out in Japan for nine months now, we’re still waiting for it over here in the Western Hemisphere. It’s out March 15, though, and I’ve got three trailers for you to get you all pumped. These are character trailers, and you can play as all three in the game. Here you go:

I love video game stats sites, because they often uncover the most hilariously embarrassing data. Raptr is one such site, and they mined some fun World of Warcraft data after the epic release of Cataclysm last week. Note that because of the way Raptr works, you have to be registered with them before they can track your data. That said, they still came up with some quite amusing information.

1. The top player in the week after Cataclysm hit logged 149 hours. There are 168 hours in a week. That guy spends more time playing WoW than you spend being awake.

2. In an amusing parallel to the real world financial situation, the top 11% of WoWers are responsible for 50% of playtime in the game.

OK, so you remember how Amazon was giving away $75 gift cards with the purchase of a 160gb PS3? Yeah, well Walmart saw that and was like, “Go f–k yourself, Amazon,” and starting offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of that same 160gb PS3. And then Amazon heard about that and matched it. But now the Amazon promotion has come and gone, and so now if you want to recoup a third of the cost of a game console that you’re undoubtedly buying for some bitchy kid, you want to head over to Wal-Mart.

And you’ll actually have to head over there, because the assholes are out of stock online. That depreciates the value of the gift card a little, seeing as how you’ll be paying a wad of sales tax, but it’s still pretty good. Be sure to take a camera with you so you and go in the middle of the night so you’ll get the best pictures of weirdos wandering drunkenly through the store.
Read: Wal-Mart and Amazon Fight Over Who Can Sell More PS3s

G A M I N G N E W S

Battlefield 2: Project Reality 2010 Christmas Map Pack Released!
Project Reality has released their Christmas pack for 2010, and how awesome is it? It's so awesome that even Chuck Norris plays it on his days off. With the great success of last year's Christmas map, Operation Snow Storm, the Reality Studios team decided it would once again bring in some Christmas spirit for the 2010 holiday season with a map pack featuring three snow maps! The 2010 PR:BF2 Christmas Map Pack includes the maps Northern Lights, Barentz Invasion and will also see the return of last year's smash hit, Operation Snow Storm.

/start file/
What's that? You want an update? ...well I suppose I could put something together for you... There you go, two shiny new things and an up to date scale chart, how's that?

You want me to write things about it too?

...well that's just greedy, but fine. First up we have the Covenant counterpart to the nice new tank we showed you last time, a W.I.P look at the Wraith:

Apex Studios Update 11/12/2010

Coming to H:CaW atyled as it was seen in Halo: Combat Evolved, the Covenant Wraith is a familiar face to all who have played any Halo game, capable of raining fire across a considerable portion of the battlefield this mortar tank is a constant threat to UNSC forces.

Scaletacular!

We've done a few of these in the past, but never in colour before, so I now present to you our considerably sized space scale chart:

We have a treat for you just in time for the holidays fellow EAWFiles members. Thanks to the generosity of Petroglyph Games (i.e. the guys that made Empire at War and Forces of Corruption) the EAWFiles team will be giving away 5 Steam download codes for the Petroglyph game Universe at War. Now we’re not just going to be giving away 5 codes randomly, there’s going to be a little competition.

Now the goal of this competition is to come up with the best new unique and creative idea for an EAW/FOC mod. Feel free to elaborate with a back story, unit ideas, game-play ideas (keep these reasonable to EAW/FOC) and more to make your idea stand out. The creators of the five best ideas that the EAWFiles team likes will each receive a Universe at War download code. Post your ideas in the comment section below.

This contest will end in exactly one week from the time this news post is posted. The five winners will be announced at that time and will be given instructions on how to redeem their prizes. Good luck and be creative.
Read: EAWFiles Universe at War Giveaway
More Empire at War News: FileFront's Empire at War FilesEmpire at War: PvM Update
Hello friends, this is foreverrussia1, a representative from PvM, a mod for FoC.

There's actually lots of news, if you're interested, check that page out, we have quite a few screens up now, and there will be many more. We will try and sustain a steady flow of progress on there, this will mean plenty more news and other stuff to show you before our impending first release; PvM 0.5 Open beta.

So be sure to check that out

All regards,
Have a glorious day.
-The PvM team
Read: PvM Update
More Empire at War News: FileFront's Empire at War FilesEmpire at War: Thrawn's Revenge: Staying on Target
Before getting to the release schedule, as some of you may be aware, we recently were voted as one of the Top 100 mods in the Mod of the Year event held by Mod Database. We'd like to thank everyone who supported the mod by voting, we all appreciate it. I also want to take a minute to plug Farseer's new mod, Halo: Campaign Commander ( http://www.moddb.com/mods/halo-campaign-commander2 ). He's been helping us out with Thrawn's Revenge, and some of us have been helping him out with his content for that, so go check it out, it's pretty awesome so far.

For the release of version 1.1, we're going to follow a similar schedule to the release of 1.0. The final beta made its way to the testers on the 14th of this month, so it will stay with them for about a week, following which it will be released as a closed beta on our forums in the Members section. It will probably stay as a closed beta until around the 4th of January, after that the mod will be released to the full public. If we feel like any stage of this requires more time, we will not hesitate to delay it; we'd rather put out a quality mod than be a few days early. The full mod is about 1 gigabytes when packed, and 3.15 unpacked.

Just to remind people of the general changes in this version, here they are:

The MotY Award is drawing to the end and we hope that you have not been lazy and given us your vote. wink
Maybe some of you could even convince friends to vote for us. But no matter how you have supported us, we thank you very much for your effort! smile

In the last news we have shown you the Timeline Special with the past of our mod.
But this time it's all about the presence and the future!

Stargate - Empire at War: Pegasus Chronicles

This TPC-Special shall give you some insights into our current project.

During the last days, we have already released some pictures and we are now going to conclude them again, if you have missed one or two. Of course we have some more pictures, which we will add to this collection too.

We are sure some of you liked the end of the Timeline video, which showed a very small part of a battle in Pegasus Chronicles.

Now, for all that can get enough and scream for more, here is the TPC SPACE BATTLE TEASER !

Read: Stargate - Pegasus Chronicles: Mod of the Year - Awards Special
More Empire at War News: FileFront's Empire at War FilesKnights of the Old Republic II: Christmas Themed PotD's
Since Christmas is coming up, I was hoping some of you PotD authors would send in some PotD's with a Christmas theme from KOTOR and TSL. Send in as many as you like and during the week before Christmas I'll start posting those PotD's if we get enough submissions. My two favorites will be used on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Again, everybody is eligible to contribute and can submit as many as they would like. I really want to see the PotD submissions fill up the inbox. Thanks again in advance.

Quote:The site of the worst nuclear accident in history will be a new tourist attraction, the Ukrainian government announced Monday, Dec. 13. The area around Chernobyl is scheduled to open to visitors next year.

Where tourists are allowed to go, how long they may stay, and what they eat will be carefully controlled, government officials say, so the radiation risks are "negligible."

"They will be properly channeled at all times," said Vadim Chumak at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine of Ukraine.

Unfortunately all the "cool" places may still be off limits but it would still be incredible to see it.

Read the entire article over at Fox News.
Read: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone opening to Tourists in 2011
More Stalker News: FileFront's Stalker FilesWorld of Warcraft: Voice Command Center’s Annual Holiday Giveaway 2010
We have a news announcement from voicecommandcenter.com which you can view below, it includes giving away a brand new Cataclysm collectors edition and a Teamspeak 3 25 man slot server for 1 year both totalling to $139.99:

Voice Command Center (voicecommandcenter.com) will be giving away
one brand new unopened copy of the “World of Warcraft Cataclysm Collector's Edition” ($79.99 USD) AND a Teamspeak 3 server with 25 user slots for 1 year ($60.00 USD).

Here’s how to enter:
Goto: http://VoiceCommandCenter.com then click on the "Feedback" tab on the left. Just use the feedback system by posting an idea, question, problem, or praise, one random winner will then be selected from the postings on December 27th, 2010 at 12:00am CST.

The World of Warcraft Cataclysm Collector's Edition will be shipped to the winner promptly thereafter.

My god what a hectic week... I'm almost sweating after reading through all of this info o_o Good on you Danny

And have a good holiday Gamefronters :3

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